Junk Food For The Soul

Just finished watching Rambo on DVD and, I’m not sure that this is the greatest compliment but, it wasn’t that bad. Certainly not great, but watchable.

I watched the original First Blood a few days ago and was reminded what a great movie that was. This one is nowhere near that good. The story is flimsy and the social commentary – assuming it was even meant to be there – was very weak. But the action was decent as long as you’re into the crazy death-count, bodies flying everywhere, mass destruction kind of action.

If you’re hoping for a good story, something that reminds why the original was so good – like Stallone did with Rocky Balboa … well, this isn’t it. But if you just want to turn on an action flick and watch some chaos and bullets, you won’t many movies with a higher death-count than this one. In fact, I was thinking while watching it that it may be the goriest action movie I’ve ever seen. I guess that’s something.

And you won’t even have to sit through a bad Stallone motivational speech. “NOTHING IS OVER!”

Adam Movies

So, I just got my new Netflix Player box a few days ago and I really like it. Works great, free content from Netflix whenever I want, and couldn’t be easier to use.

Then today I’m reading one story about The Daily Show being streamed online followed by another about how great it would be to get Hulu video on a set-top box. I marked one of the stories on my Google Reader Shared List and commented how much I wished a company would just come out with a dead-simple device that would allow me to watch all of this stuff on my TV. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, great video podcasts, streaming services from networks like ABC and Comedy Central, everything. And it would need to be able to expand to any other service that popped up. Obviously a tall order licensing-wise because most of these companies don’t play well with others, but it could be done.

Then I started to think about that for a sec. “I want a box that would allow me to watch Daily Show on my TV? I can already do that with normal cable.” That’s when I came back to the reality that what I really want is the ability to watch anything I want, anytime I want. When I’m ready to watch The Daily Show, I want it available. I don’t want to hope that I TiVo’ed it. I don’t want to worry about the fact that I’ve had several episodes waiting on me and because I ran out of space my TiVo deleted a couple. I don’t want to have to watch a couple of minutes of each episode to see if it’s a rerun because I don’t set my TiVo to record first-run only since I sometimes have conflicts.

I just want to be able to punch up “Daily Show” and see their episode list. Then I can choose the episode I want and hit play.

Why can’t all shows be like that? If I want to watch a show like LOST on the night it comes out because I have to be able to talk about it the next day at lunch, I can. But in most cases the show is simply made available at a certain time each week and whenever I choose to watch it after that is my business.

Podcasts already do this. Each weekday a new episode of Buzz Out Loud, my favorite tech podcast, is made available sometime in the late afternoon. But I don’t listen to it that day. I usually open iTunes sometime over the weekend, download all the episodes I haven’t listened to yet and then burn them to a CD to listen to in my car. If I do a lot of errands over the weekend, I may be caught up before Monday morning. Most of the time I’m still listening to them on my Monday and Tuesday commute.

Because the content is timely, I don’t really let it go more than a week without catching up. The Daily Show, with it’s political and topical “news” would be a similar example on the TV side. But the other show that I listen the most on my daily commute is The Adam Carolla Show. It’s a daily radio show from the West Coast that I download online. Because it’s more than 2 hours everyday and my commute is only about 75 minutes round-trip, I couldn’t possibly hope to keep up with the current episodes. In fact, I’m months behind – and would have been a year or more behind if I hadn’t decided to skip the entire year that Danny Bonaduce co-hosted. But it doesn’t matter because it’s still enjoyable to listen to.

TV and movies should be the same way. You could accomplish something close by watching a lot of TV on DVD, watching streaming shows online, using the Netflix Player, etc. But what we all really want is an easy way to watch exactly what we want to watch at the exact time that we want to watch it. Of course, we’d also prefer not to have to take out a second mortgage to do it.

Update: Sounds like some people in high places actually agree.

Adam Movies, TV, Technology, TiVo

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Rachael Harris

Watching any of VH1’s “I Love…” series always reminds me how much I love Rachael Harris.

She’s not the Jessica Simpson ultra-knockout hot, she’s the woman at work that you just can’t help thinking about hot. And she’s actually funny.

Plus, I dig chicks with glasses.

Adam TV

I was just watching VH1’s I Love the ’70s Volume II … um, yeah, I really just want to lounge on the couch and do nothing today. Don’t judge!

Anyway, I was watching I Love the ’70s and they were making fun of Celebrity Bowling, some show that was on in the ’70s. They acted like it was the dumbest idea. Yet there was no mention of shows on today such as Dancing with the Stars. Though I can’t and probably will never understand the draw to watch a show like this, I’m clearly in the minority as it seems everyone else does. The show dominates the airwaves.

So I guess we can file this under “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I am going to take a little solace in the belief that 10 years from now we’ll be watching “I Love the ’00s” and making fun of the fact that people tuned in to watch D-List (at best) celebrities dance on TV.

Adam TV

Looks like there’s going to be a really cool battle scene where the clones and the jedis fight a battle while going up the side of a mountain. Could be very cool.

Adam Movies, Videos

Adam Movies, Videos

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